"Forget it, Jake, it's Iraqtown"

Mickey Kaus asks,

"Why does [Juan] Cole assume that Iraqi parliamentarians are irrational?"

Well, perhaps because other Arabs like to tell jokes about the self-destructive homicidal irrationality of Iraqis. Here's one from Richard Grenier's novel The Marrakesh One-Two (a wonderful picaresque about a Hollywood movie crew making a film similar to the late Moustapha Akkad's "Muhammad, Messenger of God" as they go from one terrible country in the Muslim world to another in the 1970s, looking for funding, but always trying to avoid ending up in Iraq):

A scorpion wants to cross the Euphrates but he can't swim. So, he asks a frog to carry him across.

The frog replies, "But you'll sting me with your paralyzing venom and then I'll drown."

The scorpion replies, "But then I'd drown too, so obviously I wouldn't do it."

"Yeah, I guess you're right. Okay, hop on."

They get to the deepest part of the Euphrates, where the scorpion stings the frog. As the frog freezes up, he croaks out, "But we'll both drown! Why did you do it?"

The scorpion replies just before he sinks, "Because it's Iraq."

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer